Every square inch of a very large desk is covered with paper. Stacks and stacks of paper, but so orderly, so neat. Each stack tidy as a brick, the relevant context and content of my life organized by brute force... Read more →
They came from Sugarland in Texas; hadn't been there very long, and before that Ohio and before that Connecticut. In Sugarland, he pronounced himself done. He was sixty, or almost, and he was done. My dad, he tells a pretty... Read more →
They were lovely babies, Hank, what the hell happened? You fed them too much gluten. I did not! Yes you did. You fed them pasta as soon as they had four teeth between them. Well, it's not like they would... Read more →
Yelena stared at the wall and nurtured her rage. Om Shanti, Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti, Shanti, Om... fifteen minutes every day. She refused to cut her hair, but clipped her nails to the quick. She was ordered to the shower... Read more →
I think all married people do this; at least that's what I tell myself. No matter how hard we try, we lose bits of ourselves over time. Commitment is a horribly abused word. As with the word, literally, it rarely... Read more →
I drove north to Starksboro on September 9 with no end date in sight. That's not me; I want concrete plans, or at least concrete foundations. I can improvise on that. The only concrete things I had were the drive... Read more →
Elizabeth performed her first airport pickup a little after 8 PM on February 27. Her mother mentioned it was odd seeing a mask or two on the plane. It reminded her of the SARS epidemic where some people wore masks... Read more →
The night after Christmas, the house flipped over, rolled once or twice, and crashed into the marsh. The tail end of 2008 thumped twice, and expired. The remaining residents of 43 Blue Spruce Circle put themselves on life support and... Read more →
On her ninth birthday, Elizabeth abruptly chose a different path. She turned her back on the Mean Girls and set about making herself invisible. In truth, she wasn't so much invisible as invulnerable. While bullying via social media became the... Read more →
Well before I married Elizabeth's father we talked about children. In those early conversations we didn't talk about financial weight so much as the emotional and support commitments; those nebulous things that go well past shelter, clothing, and food. To... Read more →